60 million Americans “abuse alcohol”. Doctors wrote 250 million prescriptions for antidepressants during 2010. Unintentional drug overdose death in the US every 19 minutes. “11 of the 12 new-to-market drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration were priced above $100,000 per-patient per-year”

submitted by EndlessSunflowers from self.whatever

It turns out that dealing drugs is extremely profitable - the 11 largest pharmaceutical companies combined to rake in approximately $85,000,000,000 in profits in 2012

. . . and that was 10 years ago (I'm sure they're good people now, just trying to do the right thing / lol)

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[–][deleted]  (4 children)

[deleted]

    [–]Objecting_Sphere 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

    Insurance just denied me access to the only drug my doctor says can treat my condition (without serious side effects that other options have). Ironically, a month of the drug costs less than the amount I pay my insurance company monthly. If I didn't pay for insurance, I would have enough money saved to afford the drug. But because I do pay them, I can't afford the treatment they decided to deny me. Granted, if my doctor fills out enough forms apparently he can force their hand. Just a matter of suffering in the meantime.

    So yeah, I agree that the free market works for most medical care. Of course catastrophe insurance makes sense, but for normal medical care, it would be better to leave insurance out of it.

    You are of course completely right that the root cause of the problem is administrative bloat enabled by insurance companies that basically exist to separate people from their money regardless of what care they need.

    [–]NuclearBadger 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

    No insurance makes sense. It creates a void of responsibility.

    They also wouldn't do it if it was fair, because then they couldn't make money.

    [–]Objecting_Sphere 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

    I don't buy the void of responsibility argument. If I get cancer, was that my responsibility? Should I have tried harder to not get cancer? I do think there needs to be some system that saves people when they are faced with a medical problem they can't pay for. It's just that insurance should be scaled back to deal only with extreme events, and not be the primary way we pay for healthcare.

    [–]NuclearBadger 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    Or the company that doesn't care about what goes into their product. It's not guaranteed to be the person getting cancer that it's their fault.

    If you become ill by self infliction then 100% you should get a bill regardless of insurance.

    Smoke for 50 years and get lung cancer? nope.

    Fall over and smash your face in at 18 because you got blind drunk? nope.

    A better system is just that you get treatment and get a bill that you have to pay before you die. Anyone that has less debt to the system gets higher priority for help.

    I pay 4 figures a month to tax and national insurance and some fat useless cunt on benefits gets to skip infront of me because they are higher risk.

    That is just disgusting.

    [–]Entropick 3 insightful - 3 fun3 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

    judaism intensifies

    [–]chottohen 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    $85B and they still have to swindle us with BS-19: Greed monkeys.

    [–]JoeyJoeJoe 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    What a shitshow. The whole country. Reboot it or shut it down.

    [–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    Throw the Yankee down the well

    [–]Objecting_Sphere 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    60 million Americans do abuse alcohol. Don't put it in scare quotes, alcoholism is a real problem that kills people.

    That said, I agree that our society has a drug problem. Drug costs must be lowered, by force. And we need to heal the failing social structures that are leading to depression, rather than just handing out happy pills that barely work.

    [–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    We must stop TEEN VAPING.

    It's like metal, bruh! In ya lungs!